Hold me now (leave me never)
by The Readers Muse
Summary: "Help us! Oh god, please! Call the police!"


**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's "The Walking Dead" or Netflix's "Sense8" or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside. I felt like celebrating because Sense8 has been renewed for season two! Whoo!

 **Authors Note #1 :** People wanted a caryl twd/sense8 crossover. So, naturally, here we are. The idea is, Carol and Daryl's cluster is birthed during the first days of the outbreak connecting them mentally and emotionally just when they need it the most.

 **Warnings:** This story is meant to fit in pre-season one, in first days of the outbreak, so it is a minor au in nature. Contains: domestic violence, spousal abuse, Daryl's shitty life, Carol's shitty life, canon appropriate language, violence, blood, guts and gore.

 **Hold me now (leave me never)**

 _"Help us! Oh god, please! Call the police!"_ _  
_  
They'd been packing to leave, entertaining vague thoughts of heading to the cabin Ed's brother time shared in the mountains a couple of states over. Biding their time until the government eventually got the virus under control and it was safe to come home when the couple across the street - the ones just starting out with a maybe-baby on the way, who'd called the police twice and looked at her with sad eyes every time she forced that brittle sharp smile on her face and told them she was fine - crashed through the front window in a tangle of bloody smears and snapping teeth. Sandy trailing intestines from the ivory-strung ruin of her stomach and Chris with a bloody bandage still firmly wrapped around his thigh.

"The bitch fucking bit me!" Ed seethed, swerving and sweating as they careened around a corner in the station wagon. Narrowly missing a smoking three car pile-up and man sobbing. Trapped in the front seat as three writhing figures scrabbled at the glass, trying to get in - such tiny little hands. She held onto the roof handle with one hand and Sophia's with the other, clutching at her from the back seat. Terror high in her throat. Lip already fat and throbbing from where Ed had backhanded her for trying to use her sweater to staunch the flow.

"I unloaded everything I had into them and they just kept coming! They wouldn't go down! You saw it!" Ed shouted, mostly to himself now as the rough edges of hysteria started settling, threatening to coast right into an adrenaline rush with barely a hitch in the rhythm. Not really seeming to notice that the bite on his arm was tendon-deep and bubbling blood at a rate she knew was going to be trouble if Ed didn't let her-

"Gonna need to pick up more ammo before we hit the interstate," he growled, shoulders hunched up like violence as alarm bells flashed inside her head. _She didn't, oh-_

She leaned back in the seat, feeling dizzy and dissociated, like she was somehow outside of her own skin as she caught a blur in the side mirror. Her face but not. She blinked, but it didn't clear. In fact, for a split second everything melded. The plush curve of her lips interspersed with three day old stubble. A dash of golden-brown to her greying spikes. Even the added layer of startled platinum-blue over her watery eyes - fierce when he glared and thoughtful when he wasn't – was striking as he stared back at her. Uncomprehending and dully accusing before she blinked slowly and deliberately, watching the double image fade, forcing herself to focus as Ed ripped down a side street.

"The Governor said they were going to be setting up safe zones. Don't you think we should-"

This time the backhand split her lip down the center. Flooding her tongue with royal-pink as an unfamiliar twist of anger jolted down her spine. The ferocity of it caused her lips to pull back. Revealing the points of her canines, bared like a momentary threat before she pressed her hand against her mouth, startled and blinking through a familiar sheen of tears.

"When I want your opinion I'll ask for it! Now shut your mouth. Both of you! I need to concentrate!" Ed yelled, all blood-shot whites in the rear-view mirror as Sophia whimpered and clutched her doll.

She didn't say a word the rest of the drive. Letting Ed bleed sluggishly down the seat as he cursed and raged. Still trying to pin down the unsteady surge of emotions rising and falling in her chest like the tapering uncertainty of a cresting ocean wave.

* * *

"Help us! Oh god, please! Call the police!"

It was a strange thing, answering your own echoes.

But then again, it wasn't really her that answered, not exactly.

It was him.

* * *

"Run," he told her, raspy and open-mouthed. Breathing hard, skin sheened and speckled red around a dirty wife-beater and split-fists, distantly aware that it was her own lips that were moving as Sophia cowered in the back seat. Safe and sound as the thing that had once been her husband oozed darkness across the gravel at their feet

She raised her eyes slowly, carefully. Watching him in the reflection of the cracked store glass as he smeared red through sleep-mussed hair. He was bare from the waist down save for a pair of boxers barely clinging to his hips. Eyes deep set like he'd woken up from a hangover and had tipped freshly into her nightmare.

Only it wasn't a nightmare.

It was reality.

She'd figured that out pretty quickly.

Around the same time Ed had exploded out of the front of the Army Surplus, caught in a tangled knot of tearing flesh and inhuman growls. And when she'd felt him slide into her – like a shift from the driver's seat to the passengers and suddenly he was kicking out of her seat belt, calloused hands curling around the tire iron under the seat and opening the door. Confident and mainlining rage like it was oxygen as Sophia screamed for her. Frightened and doe-eyed as she shut the door behind her with a predatory confidence only he properly owned.

It was a reality where nothing made sense. Least of all the snatches of reflection she caught in the corner of her eye as they took down the first walker, then the second. Horror rising like sick in her throat one minute, only to be replaced by the cold gleam of savage revenge less than half a beat later. But for some reason, as long as she had him – _Daryl_ \- churning like an upset stomach in the back of her mind. A man she couldn't possibly know. Who wasn't even really _here_ in the first place, she knew with blinding confidence that she'd be alright.

She shuddered through a breath, feeling the faint burn of pulled muscle start to filter through the shock as the distant sound of sirens flared up mournfully in the smoky-thick air. The street was deserted and quiet around them. Everyone had already been evacuated and it was close to curfew. Marshal Law until the crisis was over. She'd be lucky if she could find her way to the barricades in time. They promised that the safe zone wouldn't-

He was watching her.

But not like Ed used to.

 _Never like that._

"Where are you?" he asked, hissing a bit as bare feet ground unexpectedly through glass-seeded gravel. Sparing a look at the station wagon and the little peeping cries coming from inside with an inscrutable look she could already see right through.

"Atlanta," she answered, turning around to gesture at the distant skyline half lost in acrid black smoke. Everything was falling apart. Falling too fast. Making all their plans of fleeing the city and going cross-country seem like a pipe dream. The interstate was already clogged with wrecks. They'd be lucky if they made it to the next exit, let alone the next state. "Just outside of the safe zone. Are you nearby?"

"Close enough," he grunted, squinting around, eyes piercing before gesturing down at the bodies at their feet. "Ain't safe here. There'll be more of them things. Probably heard this mess."

The tip of her tongue traced across her lower lip - strangling herself on the handful of words she actually trusted herself to say when he suddenly went rigid. Making her muscles clench up - aggressively anxious – like she was steeling herself for some sort of blow. Something that buzzed like a forgotten name in the back of her head.

 _Oh hell!_

She frowned, opening her mouth to ask where the thought had come from only to find him looking up. Away and focused down the side of the building – eyes narrowed. She got a flash of a trailer hallway, peeling wood panels and dust before she lost it again. Left on the outside to watch him glare at something she couldn't see. The expression lining itself deep across his features like a scar before the sudden sound of gunfire, maybe half a block away and coming fast, made her jump.

But Daryl didn't even flinch.

Like a mirror fracturing on only one side.

Instinctively she strained, trying to cross over like she'd done before only to get a flicker-sharp memory instead. It wasn't much, but it was enough to give her the impression of a loopy drawling voice - five different shades of rough, a leather vest and a greying close cropped head before it was gone again. Leaving her treading water where they connected as another surge of resigned irritation flooded through her.

It wasn't her own.

But she felt it.

Knew it.

 _Merle._ _  
_  
"Are you-" she started.

Then, as abruptly as he'd appeared - tripping into her life like the best sort of mistake when a chorus of yells rose up from the store and Ed's scream pitched high and gargling before cutting off - he was gone. She blinked, reflection staring back at her - this time keeping its own secrets - bloody shirt rippling loose off her frame in the ashy wind. Leaving her with her husband's blood smeared deep into her scalp and trembling hands that still remembered the weight of the tire iron as she'd - _no, they'd_ \- brought it down again and again. Until Ed's skull lost its shape and she tasted an uncertain fledging sort of freedom for the first time in almost fifteen years.

The _I'll find you_ had been silent. But strangely enough out of everything that had happened, she believed it the most. Even when her feet started moving and she was fumbling with the seat belt, avoiding the exposed bone and the brain matter dripping sluggishly down the glass on the passenger door. Remembering shakily how he'd flickered into being beside her in the car the moment she screamed. Flinching back as Ed threw himself across the hood, spreading spider-cracks along the windshield. The keys glinting from the loop on his belt, barely able to breathe as the wail of sirens put a levy on whatever time she had left to make it to the military barricades.

She pulled Sophia into the front with her before starting the car and reversing back onto the street. Letting the wheels hush quietly over Ed's splayed limbs, _snap-snapping_ like dry twigs in the suffocating quiet. But for reasons beyond her understanding, the wan ghost of a hopeful smile flirted with the corners of her lips as she caught her expression in the rear-view mirror. Facing herself, head held high and almost proud for the first time in longer than she could remember.

He was waiting.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.


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